Chapter Five #3
They emptied the garage first. Austin had already repaired and sold two of the lawn mowers, and the cash was now sitting in an old coffee can in the kitchen because they weren’t opening a joint checking account just for the next six months, and trying to split all the bills fifty-fifty was insane.
Now they rolled out the rain barrels. One had a long crack in the side.
Austin opened it up and they filled it with other garage detritus—old newspapers and trash, wood scraps too small to be useful, holey boots and broken gardening tools.
Then they tilted it onto its side and slid it into the dumpster.
That left a few useful implements—a snow shovel, pruning shears, a rake, and a snowblower that impressed even Austin by starting on the first try.
Joe tidied up some plywood and two-by-fours that might yet find a home during this impromptu reno project.
He leaned them against the outside wall so Austin could use his miniature blower to clear out the dust, which he did with his bandana pulled over his face.
Joe stayed out of the way. He didn’t want to inhale whatever had been growing in that garage for the past forty years either.
Finally Austin surveyed the space and declared, “Okay. Looks good, let’s do it.”
The next thing to go was the demon fridge. Austin gave Joe bombastic side-eye when he secured ratchet straps and a padlock around the doors before they managed to wrangle the thing onto a dolly and out to its final destination.
Joe sighed with relief when the job was done.
Austin only shook his head.
For the next hour, they wrestled the mouse-eaten “soft goods” furniture out of the main floor of the house and into the dumpster. The decaying couch was the first thing to go, though Austin thought the armchair looked like it was in decent-enough shape, so that got moved to the garage instead.
With several pieces of furniture out of the way, they were able to pile the boxes more efficiently and finally excavate parts of the house that were previously unreachable.
In the living room, behind towers of boxes, newspapers, and magazines, they found a piano—an antique upright with carved details on the front legs and panels.
The old mahogany-stained wood was battered, but it looked in good condition from the outside.
Unable to resist the temptation, Joe lifted the key cover.
Over the keyboard, in gold lettering, was the name Sherlock-Manning. Joe loved it.
Still curious, he pulled out the old bench, tested it gingerly to make sure it would stand up under his weight, and then sat down.
Cautiously, he plunked a few keys to test them out.
He tapped out a quick melody and didn’t want to cringe.
He wouldn’t say it was in tune, exactly, but it wasn’t as catastrophically off-key as he’d expected.
“Do you play?” Austin asked, stepping in close.
“Took lessons as a kid. Mom insisted.” He tried a few quick scales to warm up his fingers.
“You any good?” Austin teased. “I mean, you haven’t been a kid in a while.”
Instead of answering, Joe smirked and then, with a quick prayer to the music gods that his fingers would remember what to do, he began.
The first few notes were a bit rusty, but he quickly fell into the swing of the old Queen song.
Muscle memory took hold, and when he reached the verse, he began to sing “Love of My Life.”
No one would claim that Joe was brilliant—he wasn’t about to put Michael Bublé or Harry Styles out of a job. But he could carry a tune.
Caught up in the song, one of his favourites, he kept playing all the way through to the end.
When the last notes faded, he opened his eyes and found Austin still standing to the right and staring somewhat wide-eyed. Looked like Joe had finally managed to surprise him.
“What do you think? Should I take my show on the road?” Joe batted his lashes.
Austin coughed and rolled his eyes. “You’ll need a better instrument if you plan on going professional.”
“Hey, she’s a fine instrument.” Joe swiped a hand across the open lid.
“I mean. It’s shockingly okay-sounding,” Austin agreed. “What’s the make?” He fished out his phone.
“Sherlock-Manning.”
“What, seriously? Okay. Hmm, looks like a Canadian company. They opened in 1902 and existed until the eighties.”
“So what you’re saying is that this thing is anywhere from forty to a hundred and twenty years old.”
“I guess so.” Austin looked at the piano again, as if he could guesstimate the age by the look alone. Joe had respect for Austin’s varied knowledge of antique and vintage items, but he doubted it stretched that far.
“I’ll buy you out of it,” Joe said quickly.
Austin looked up and blinked. “What?”
“Just….” Joe couldn’t explain it, the sudden panic he felt at the idea of Austin trying to determine the instrument’s value, offloading it on some Facebook Marketplace ad. “I want to keep this one.”
It wasn’t that weird, right? Austin had kept those bowls and a few of the dishes—nothing worth as much as a piano or anything, but—
“You don’t have to buy me out.” He put his phone back in his pocket and the thing in Joe’s chest that had tightened at the idea of the piano leaving him loosened again. “But you do have to get off your ass and help me clean out the rest of the house.”
Half an hour later, he was trying to move the filing cabinet in the office, but when he called out to Austin for help, no one answered. Annoyed, he squeezed his way around the various furniture toward the dining room. “Austin?”
“Joe? Thank fuck,” came the muffled voice—from behind him. Joe turned around. The noise had come from the closed bathroom door. “I’m stuck and don’t have my phone.”
“How exactly did you get stuck?”
A deep sigh. “The fucking door handle came off.”
Joe blinked. It was still attached on the outside.
But when he reached out to open the door, his side came off in his hand.
“Ah.” He knelt down to peek through the hole where the doorknob was supposed to go.
He could see the light on the other side, as well as some kind of mechanism that obviously worked the lock and latch.
“Okay, so… any idea how to open the door?”
“You could pop the hinges off, but that’s probably overkill.”
God, Joe hoped so. This door looked pretty heavy. It would be awkward as fuck to try to get it back on. “Yeah, let’s call that Plan C.” He registered movement on the other side, then made out the dark brown of Austin’s iris peering back through the hole. “Did you lock it?”
“Unfortunately.”
Shit. “Did you unlock it before the handle came off?”
“I fucking hope so. I really don’t want to spend the rest of my life in the john.”
“I don’t want that either. At some point I’m going to have to pee.”
“I guess I could go out the window.”
Despite much coaxing, that window had never opened more than four inches. “Plan Z,” Joe said. “I don’t want to buy a new window for Christmas.” He squinted at the various metal bits that made up the handle. “I’ll go get a screwdriver.”
The screwdriver, despite its many interchangeable tips, did not appear to be the correct tool. Whatever Joe managed to unscrew didn’t seem capable of unlatching the door.
“Maybe I can get it from this side,” Austin said impatiently. “Can you push it under the door?”
Joe couldn’t. It didn’t fit.
Something thunked against the other side of the door. Probably Austin’s head. “So… back to those hinges.”
Joe tapped the screwdriver against the lock guts. There was a spring there, and that bit obviously attached to the doorknob, so…. “This would’ve been easier if I were the one stuck in the bathroom, huh?”
Austin snorted. “Little bit.” The door shifted and the light changed; he must be looking through the hole again. “Hey… do you think you can fit a butter knife through there?”
The butter knife didn’t fit through the hole, but it did fit under the door, and a few seconds later Austin jammed the blade into the slot left by the handle and twisted.
The door opened.
“Freedom!” Austin said, mock jubilant, his hands raised in victory.
Joe yanked him out of the bathroom by the hand. “Move. I have to pee.”
By the time Gavin and Alex showed up, the dumpster was just under half full and Joe had worked up enough of a sweat to ditch his hoodie in Austin’s trailer.
His work T-shirt stuck to his back. Austin had tied his flannel overshirt around his waist and the bandana back in his hair again.
Joe was half tempted to offer him one of the dozens of hair ties he’d accumulated in his truck, some left there by Meg and Alex and Starling and some he’d bought to have on hand when they needed one.
He didn’t get the words out before the side door banged open. Damn kids were going to dent the plaster. Not that you’d be able to tell.
“Manners!” Joe hollered anyway.
“Child labor!” Gavin yelled back.
Austin snorted.
“You’re almost eighteen,” Joe pointed out. “Move, please.” Gavin was in the way of Joe and Austin getting the fuck-off heavy dresser from the front bedroom into the garage.
Alex held the door from the outside, because at some point Joe’s lessons on courtesy had stuck with them in a way they hadn’t with the other kids.
“Thank you, Alex. You’re my favorite.”
“Hey,” Gavin protested.
“Hay is for horses,” Joe and Alex chorused.
Austin tripped over the threshold. “Jesus Christ, you actual dad.”
Alex and Gavin stepped forward before the dresser could come to any harm, but Austin didn’t need help, even if his facial expression said he thought Joe did.
Joe only grinned at him. “If you think that’s bad, you should see the Father’s Day presents I get.” He steadied himself to take his first step down the porch stairs. “Now—lift with your legs.”